My favourite place to walk my dogs is Hadley Woods. As I enter, I feel as if I came into a temple. The trees above me create multiple domes and I can imagine a surrealistic painting of St. Paul’s Cathedral extended and mirrored above my head. I immediately relax, my senses sharpen and my lungs open. As I walk on tiny winding paths, observing the changes that occurred since yesterday my heart expands, I feel total bliss. I listen to the sounds of the woods, I look at the sky, the trees, fallen leaves, the earth and I try to notice and take in as much as I can.
As one would do in a temple, I pray, connect to God, my meditation witnessed by nature begins.
Today, my mind connects to the word ‘fear’ . I feel so safe in these woods, unaware of any dangers, connected to this place, trusting it. This is a completely irrational feeling, because in reality a woman is walking alone in the woods…what can go wrong? Should I be anticipating to experience something to go wrong?
Recently I read a poem by Khalil Gibran about a river trembling with fear before entering the sea. She has already made such a profound way flowing down from the peaks of the mountains. In her anticipation of a negative experience she is afraid of disappearing forever…
As a performing musician occasionally I connect to the fear of disappearing, being forgotten, and more recently – being cancelled because of my support for Israel and speaking up against antisemitism. My friends were warning me. Were they anticipating a negative experience?
As a woman, I often contemplate aging and how it affects my body, my looks. I question: what if I won’t be noticed any more, will I disappear? I already know the answer to these questions – Age is not counted in numbers, it is a feeling I have inside, a feeling of full acceptance and love wherever I am in my life.
As a mother, whose son will be leaving home soon to start his own life, I often contemplate on what it will mean in terms of our connection? What if I am not needed anymore? Another unknown on the list, which I can choose to anticipate to experience negatively or to live through it trustingly and see what happens.
I am not alone in these fears. My friends – musicians, parents among them, women of the same age – we talk about it, comfort and support each other. Balancing the fears with reality, hope and trusting our individual journeys. I am fortunate and grateful to have a tight group of friends, with whom I feel safe, thanks to their unconditional love, and a mutual fierce wish for me to be happy.
I come across a dead tree and connect to how quickly our minds are drawn towards possible negative, rather than possible positive scenarios first…
I examine further the ‘anticipating negativity’. I connect to the fear of disappearing, feeling small, when experiencing ridicule, shaming, disrespect, humiliation, bullying, gaslighting, as part of mental and emotional domestic abuse. I had a fair share of these experiences and in my current life I am observing it in different types of relationships around me. Partners, parents and children, co-workers, boss and employee, landlord and a tenant, a lodger and a landlord, a teenager and a parent, neighbours. Each individual situation, in their own experience equates in its magnitude to what is happening in the world right now.
Feeling all this sadness overwhelms me, I notice I start walking faster, as if trying to run away from something, I feel anxiety rising in my body and I have stopped noticing what is around me…I pause.
I find a bench under an oak tree and take a few deep breaths, slow down my racing mind, my fast-beating heart. Rain starts to fall gently on the leaves above me, the oak is protecting me. I take another breath and as I open my mouth to breath out – my grief comes out. Tears flood down my cheeks, I am sobbing. I start to feel a sense of relief, as if with each tear the pain is coming out. I learnt over the years to listen to my body and to take care of myself, by allowing my emotions to have an outlet. My favourite way is sharing it with another person or letting it out in the presence of nature. Writing this here, in my blog, on my website is my way to show a human, vulnerable side that enhances my Opera Diva persona.
I feel better, I am more present and here in the moment. It seems like the tears have cleared my vision. I notice the beauty around me even more acutely, it moves me deeply now. I become aware of my own inner beauty; it makes me feel fearless. I realise that the only ‘disappearing’ I need to be afraid of is losing myself…losing this awareness, this inner peace, this incredible connection to nature, to life, to people, to love, to gratitude, to this world, of which I am an important part of, to God in my heart.
I feel taller, my lungs are breathing easily, my heart has expanded and my mind is at peace. I want to sing now.
I don’t anticipate negative experiences. I am ready to face the unknown.
At the end of the poem the river realises that it needs to take a risk to enter the ocean, because only then the fear will disappear. Because it is not about disappearing into the ocean, it is about becoming the ocean…
